


Risicò

by buttermeup



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M, Ninja turtles references, and not nice people, contains dark themes, foul language and the works, warnings for violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 10:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11987679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttermeup/pseuds/buttermeup
Summary: Agent Styles is being held in captivity, but help comes in unexpected ways.





	Risicò

The chair creaked on the wooden floor as his face was once again pummeled by one of the biggest fists he had ever seen. Harry hissed through the pain and spit out the blood that pooled at the bottom of his mouth.

"You know it would end a hell of a lot faster for you if you tell me what I want to know", smarmed the only other man sitting in the dimmed room while the big thug who kept slugging him took a step back, letting his boss run the show.

"What is it you want to hear?", Harry tasted his own blood as he replied. He has managed to get himself into a real jam this time, he couldn't remember the last time he was caught so off guard and at a complete loss as to how the hell he'd manage to walk in to this mind-numbing clusterfuck of a situation. How could their intel fail them so spectacularly on what was supposed to be just another, basic – in and out under fifteen minutes – assignment?

"I told you, I was just supposed to meet my friend - Bill, and I guess I got lost somehow. What is going on here? I swear I have no idea what you want from me, but I'm really worried about Bill – ", he stalled.

He knew his handler was in tune with everything that was going on through the live feed his concealed tracking devices provided. He and Niall been partners for years now, Harry trusted him with his eyes closed and hands tied behind his back – which was scarily close to his current predicament. But even Niall couldn't alert the backup team to their current location in such a short amount of time; his partner was good, but not that good. Reinforcement was undoubtedly on its way but Harry had an ominous feeling that this time it just wasn't going to cut it.

"Don't play coy with me boy", the boss cut him off, he read his game with dexterity befitting of the shrewd despot he was known as, "do you expect me to believe you happened to stumble across my main base conveniently enough to snoop around my business? How for fuck's sake did you know how to find me? "

Yeah, that wasn't planned. His objective was a simple scan through the remote and presumably deserted perimeter to check for any suspicious activity, given under direct orders from the board of directors. In the debriefing, they have been told there were some concerns about the location being used as a transient station in the human trafficking ring spread across Europe.

They didn't, however, expect to come across one of the biggest crime families in the country. The man who was sitting two feet away from him, lazily running his left hand on the latest boy toy he felt like keeping by his side, was a man feared throughout the country, Florent Nicodème Amarante.

The Amarante family was renowned as heavy hitters in the crime world, a leading force in money laundering, drug dealing and human trafficking. And even though the identities of the active family members were widely known, the law enforcing government facilities had a hard time bringing their tightly run organization to the ground. Even though their name has been linked to dozens of illegal transactions in the past decade, there was never enough evidence or witnesses willing to testify against them in order to bring justice and place them behind bars. Theirs, was a family business meticulously kept and diligently committed to leaving no loose ends behind, in large, thanks to the notorious head and chief orchestrator of it all.

Harry could recognize his face anywhere.

The old mob boss was seriously suffering in the looks department, his dappled skin wasn't fairing any better even under the overgrown facial hair and sleeked black hair, his right eye was scarred with an old injury that stretched across his face. The overall impression left him with one hell of an ugly mug, but the cold, almost sadistic quality in his stare and the idle way he addressed his subordinates was enough to keep anyone around him on edge.

"You think I'm stupid enough to believe you got lost thirty miles outside the city? Not to mention, this", Amarante waved Harry's 9mm handgun precariously close to his direction. Harry was proud to admit he's managed to use that weapon to take down four of the crime lord's men before the rest of them managed to disarm him and tie him up. He supposed there wasn't any real doubt Harry wasn't there unintentionally, but he was still far away from giving up his own innocent facade in this back and forth game.

"Weird I know", Harry laughed it off but couldn't hide the wince when the boss motioned for his goon to have another go at him.

Aside from the goon, the boss and his pet, there were five other members in his posse, a couple in his line of sight, watching from a safe distance and the rest loitering near the only entrance, right behind Harry's back. Needless to say, there was no easy way of getting out of there without some kind of divine miracle.

Another punch to his right cheek and two more to his gut had him seeing stars, but he had suffered far worse and in far more dire straits. Even if this day did end up as the day he finally meets his maker, Harry wasn't afraid. He had stared far too frequently into the barrel of the gun to start being scared now.

After the brute finished pummeling him to his heart's content, Harry saw him backing up to take a stand next to the other tank sized bodyguard in the room and looked back at him with a barely suppressed smirk of rotting and missing teeth. Harry decided he would call him Bebop. Yeah, that seemed about right.

"Is that enough for you, or do you need any more convincing?", Amarante practically purred as his pet slid down to sit on the arm of the chair next to him.

"Convincing on what? That you're the ugliest mother fucker I've ever seen? Nope, I'm all sold on that one!"

"I see you're enjoying this", Amarante said, not taking the bait, again he gestured for the mountain sized goons to carry on, only this time when Bebop moved to leave his stand, his fellow overgrown brute grabbed his arm and grunted at him something heavy with an eastern twang. Harry recognized the words and smiled as wide as he could, finally they gave him a lead, something to work with.

"Aww, ain't that sweet? You're little buddy wants a turn", Harry helpfully stoked the spark of animosity, hoping to breathe a little life into it and turn it into a flame. Instantaneously, his meddling did the trick and Bebop turned to his friend – Rocksteady, Harry mentally filled in – with a sneer already in place, ready to fight him on it. Harry smirked at them. "C'mon, be a good friend, let Rocksteady have a go."

But being not a man for nonsense, Amarante barked at Harry to be quiet and then turned to the other two. "You! What are you waiting for?", he pointed at Rocksteady and the aforementioned criminal merrily stepped forward to take the other one's place. Harry had a second to be disappointed that his diversion was so quickly intercepted before the guy beat his paws into his ribs with a force so intense they nearly broke the chair Harry was cuffed on. He was pounded harder with each strike, hurt somehow getting both sharper and duller at the same time, while Amarante was simply content to sit back and watch the spectacle. It took too long for the blows to finally die down and just as Harry felt ready to breathe in again, the bastard punched him one more time, making Harry's head snap back with the force of it.

This time it took him longer to get reoriented, the blow to the head making it all the more difficult to focus on his surroundings. He tried to shake off the vertigo and recognize the words Amarante was addressing him with, but it was slow going.

"– is no more chances. If there is nothing you can give me then I guess we have to call it a night. Now for the last time, who do you work for?"

"Fuck you", he managed to choke out, his ribs felt cracked and his face like a raw mess. If he broke his nose again, he was going to get very mad. Harry vaguely processed the warning in his head that said he should have said something different, anything to stall his impending doom; but he was too out of it, his brain moved slowly and uncoordinated, like he was trying to run a marathon while his feet were stuck in molasses.

"Alright", the old boss made a big display of sighing and ostensibly giving up on extracting any more information from Harry. "I guess I don't have any more use for you, then."

Bebop and Rocksteady weren't moving, standing at attention, in wait for their leader's cue.

"Wait", Harry groaned out loud when he tried to straighten his neck and sit upright in the restraints of his confinement, but words failed him, for the first time since he was put on the job he was at a complete lose, knowing nothing he could say could sway the scales in his favor.

He was left staring into Amarante's deformed eyes, heart thudding in his throat and palms clenching into fists in the tightness of their binds; his life was hanging on the balance and at the drop of a hat, with just one word from this heinous human being, everything he has worked his entire life for, his friends, family, his mother who thought he was safe and sound, sleeping in his apartment, would all be over.

He could feel tremors rake his body and beads of cold sweat gathering on his neck.

"Keep your cool", Niall's voice whispered in his earpiece. The picture he was getting through Harry's feed was probably static and blurred, but it was enough to get him out of there, if only Niall would get there already. "ETA seven minutes", he said, right now, seven minutes seemed like a life time.

In his periphery, Harry noticed, the boy toy's hand that was constantly on his master's shoulder begin to slide closer to his neck and massage the old man's skin in small circles. As far as distractions went, it was as good as any, and Harry noticed with some relief the tension slowly beginning to leave the big boss' shoulders.

"Hmm..", Amarante closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "What do you say darling? Should I give Sebastián the pleasure of terminating this scum?"

"Mm.. maybe", his pet purred and let Amarante caress a hand half way up his thigh before standing up and scrutinizing Harry's state. "But maybe – we could play with him a bit, first."

"I don't know", Amarante almost pouted. "I'm tired of looking at him. But you could off him yourself if you'd like."

Still trying to clear his head and form some new course of action, Harry noted with a strange outer body consciousness that these people were arguing over his fate like he was nothing more than a slab of meat to feed their sadistic appetites with. The boy looked over his shoulder and tsked at his boss, almost flirtatiously. "You're no fun at all. There's not much fight left in him, I'm sure we could get him to talk."

Harry, for the first time, regarded the boy and looked up into the younger man's face and questioned his place in the odd position he was put in. It was common for powerful men such as Florent Amarante to entertain themselves with pretty castaways who happened to fall into the criminal lord's clutches. Some of them regrettable victims of the human trading system while others typical products of the prostitution industry.

And Harry, who was trained to read a person, notice things normal people simply wouldn’t, even in his current state, could sense that something in the young man's tone, the subtle respect he commanded from Amarante or the air he was handling himself with just didn't fit the type. Harry's skilled eyes picked up on the fact that while the lad's muscle mass wasn't prominent, it was still on the heavy side for someone who has either been hustling or fell prey to one of the recruiting trade agencies in the area. The boy also had no signs of a long-term substance abuse, so maybe not a pet after all, but a part of the mob boss' team.

The boy tilted his head as he approached Harry's chair in the middle of the room. "I don't think we're done with him yet", he said as he walked around him and feathery ran his fingers on Harry's neck as he stepped back into his line of sight. Harry noticed he had surprisingly unblemished features, dirty blonde locks and dark smudges under blue eyes that shown bright is seeming contrast to the shadows that surrounded them.

Agent Styles had the fleeting thought that it would be a shame to see that face stained with blood drops after Amarante disposed of him. That was, unless Niall or the agency managed to take them down first, but in any case Harry didn't see things ending well for the boy in front of him.

Amarante chuckled and laid back in his seat. "Fine, I give in. Do your worst, Jay", he relented in front of the boy – Jay apparently – who seemed to contemplate Harry, like he was toying with all the different possibilities he could toy him with, now that he had permission to do as he pleased.

"You always know how to give me the greatest gifts." His lips quirked up and then grabbed Harry's neck with his right hand in a choking hold, in a move far too fluent to be anything but practiced skill. Harry fought for air, testing the strength of the wires that bit into his skin and pinned his arms to the chair, trying to throw his head back but his assailant quickly prevented him.

A second before his vision started to grey out around the edges, the grip on his windpipe was released and he gasped to fill his lungs with air again. Harry bent forward in his restraints, resting his forehead on his knee, his body shook as he took another shuddery breath and another one after that, trying to recover his equilibrium as fast as he could.

"Are you ready to spill your beans yet?", he heard against his ear right before he was strangled again for longer than he could process and then released again, on the verge of blacking out.

This person, this Jay, was too well versed with what he was doing, Harry could almost recognize the training behind it – his precise handiwork and the exaggerated ease, with which he manipulated Harry's body with, they all stated the obvious, this man was no amateur. Harry wheezed and coughed like a dying man, he felt like he reached the surface after he'd been drowning and he couldn't get enough air to catch his breath; the logical part of his brain supplied that it wasn't long now, he just needed one more minute.

Amarante stood up, for the first time since Harry saw him, and stared with sickening fondness at his – Harry wasn't sure what he was anymore, trained assassin, probably – and laid a heavy hand on the small of his back.

Harry blew a few deep breaths out of his nose, repetitively, and the minute he was able to, he sent the loathsome duo that was taunting him the dirtiest look he had the strength to summon.

"You're not pulling it off, you look like a pissed off puppy." Jay cocked his head and sweetly grinned at him.

"You have to tell me someday where you acquired such skills, Jamie", Amarante fawned and stroked his hand down Jay or Jamie's side, and Harry had an atypical unpleasant response at the sight of the old man's hands, freely roaming over the younger man's body. Harry caught himself on time, but Amarante caught the way Harry's eyes tracked between him and the recently recruited addition to his team. He hid his smile in the back of Jamie's neck when he said, "I think he likes you."

Harry tried to get an objection past his chapped lips, wanted to say that no, he didn't, but his throat still burned from the abuse it was put through. Jamie lifted an eyebrow and spared him a glance, completely casually but for a second there Harry could have sworn he saw something else, Jay's eyes loaded with more than Harry could comprehend, all the while Amarante's hand never strayed. It was a sensual touch but Harry doubted there was anything of actual physical nature in that relationship – he had misjudged it at first, their relationship wasn't a pleasurable one but a business one. Hence the note of respect and equal standing Harry had detected.

"He does, the little pup has eyes only for you." Amarante murmured in Jamie's ear but loud enough for the whole crew to hear. "What do you say, Jay? Want to take him for a ride?"

Harry gritted his teeth and it took everything in his power to gather enough saliva in his dry mouth and spit at the pair of them. "Well, now you've angered me." Amarante pronounced, tone almost bored as if he was just looking for the quickest excuse to be done with him. "And you really shouldn't have done that."

Harry's eyes wandered over the scene, finally locking on the blue eyed boy's as he distantly heard the gravelly voice of Amarante.

"Finish him."

That's it. It was over.

-

The thought didn't even finish running through his mind when what sounded like a brigade of armed men barged into the warehouse, gunfire and foot stamping like thunder, disarming and taking control of every member of the mob in no more than twenty seconds. Harry felt something knocking him and the chair over and his side was thumped hard against the floor, there were too many things happening around him to keep track, but he was able to see through his bleary eyes, it was Jamie who was hovering over him and slicing the ties binding his hands to the armrests.

Then he was gone.

Harry lifted his head to see him diving after a gun and taking off in the opposite direction the armed forces broke through; they were his section, he recognized them immediately and soon lost Jamie's tracks in the cluster of activity. The next time he looked up there was Niall standing over him, making sure he was okay and checking him for injuries until finally Harry had to bat his hands away when he tried to help him up.

"I'm fine." He muttered, ego more bruised than any of his physical injuries. Not only did he have to solely rely on his rescuers to get him out of that mess, but now he would have to explain to his superiors how he was so careless as to get himself into that situation in the first place.

-

Niall was looking him over outside the compound when he heard shouting, they both looked up to see the last person Harry would have expected to just march in to a place swamped with deadly agents. As if he wasn't a high profile crime lord's right hand. And to say that he didn't look happy, was an understatement.

" – under what authority do you send one of your agents completely unassisted and without clearing it with the board!"

"It was cleared", Jeff countered, "are you even cleared to be here? Or be having this conversation?"

"Please", Jamie laughed humorlessly. "I've been cleared to know things that would make you blush like a schoolgirl."

The raised voice of Jamie having an argument with his superiors, reached Harry's ear and his whole body became a tense line. There was a hostile suspect who was armed, no less, and his unit cohorts were acting as though Elmo just dropped by for a friendly visit. He stood up on shaky legs despite Liam's protests and took great lengths to walk the few feet that separated him from the bickering group.

But before he could get a word in, Jamie spotted him and lunched into his own attack. "Well, look who it is, the person responsible for it all. What in god's name did you think you were doing?!"

"I – ", Harry took a step back.

"How much more incompetent could you get?", he barreled on. "You've been spotted, then run away! Don't stay and fight when it's ten against one, you dumb oaf!"

Harry didn't even have a chance to be insulted before his section leader to show up. "This is your team, Payne?!", Jamie lashed out the minute Liam was in sight.

"Louis?", Liam seemed just as puzzled as Harry felt, and also a little drained. "What are you doing here?"

"I was about to ask you lot the same thing. You do realize you’ve managed to completely obliterate the workings of an entire bureau with what you just pulled?"

"Uh.. no?", Liam suggested ever so eloquently but it summed it up perfectly, they were all completely out of the loop.

"Damn it Liam! We've been working on this for the last eight months!"

"We don't really know how this could have happened", Liam tried to sooth. "No intelligence unit gave us any red flags about this mission."

"Don't you cross your intel with the government? To avoid situations like this!", the agent nearly shouted. "A bunch of amateurs!"

Harry's head started to hurt with all the new information gathered in the last few minutes. He wasn't sure he was following exactly what was going on, he did know, however, that there were plenty of insults thrown around, mainly from this Louis guy. And Harry felt very offended on behalf of the entire organization he was very proud to be a part of; and right on cue, the head of said organization stepped onto the scene.

"Agent Tomlinson, it's been a while", Simon greeted. So it appeared that everyone was familiar with him except Harry.

"Simon, this is not good." Louis shook his head, he sounded almost relieved to be talking to someone of higher authority.

"I've already spoken to your supervisor, he's caught up on everything. Amarante?"

"He got away", Louis replied.

"Okay." Simon curtly replied, as he tended to do, and continued to walk with Louis as the latter filled him in on everything he wanted to know.

With every argument Louis made, Harry felt slightly less indignant and a little more guilty; basically, the situation that soon became clear to them was that Tomlinson's agency was slowly but surely weaving a case through one of their undercover agents, code named 'Jamie' the mercenary, while maliciously planning a raid timed for another five months, when they would have been able to gain the most leverage to snuff out as much as they could of Amarante's illegal activities.

So Harry pretty much just went and fucked that all up in one fell swoop.

Now that only a few members of Amarante's entourage were detained and Tomlinson' alias had been disclosed the minute he jumped to knock over Harry's chair and ran after the fleeing boss, the entire operation to attain him went down the drain and even Amarante himself was now all the wiser. The family would have a chance to regroup, cover for weak links that have been compromised and change the main routes they were using to smuggle drugs and human migrates in and out of the country.

It was a major fuckup and all Harry's fault, he shifted his weight to get a better balance, all of a sudden he was feeling a little faint.

"Should you be standing here?" Liam asked all of a sudden as if just noticing Harry was there.

"I'm good", Harry tried to protest, but Liam and Niall grabbed him under his arms after he continued to sway on his feet. "C'mon lad, let's get you to the medic."

-

"Wait 'til the board get a load of this." Louis looked a bit calmer now, after he updated Simon and they quickly sent a search party after Amarante. But he was still being a prissy asshole to everyone that didn't belong to his own agency, Harry was beginning to think it was his default setting.

"I think they would have gotten word of it by now", Harry supplied and got the stink eye from Louis for his effort. They were waiting for the cleanup team to finish so they could all go back to their base and in the few minutes he'd managed to spend in Louis's company he learned that he really didn't seem to care for him. Not that he could blame him, but still. The more he had to listen to that person's foul mood and snarky jabs, the more he couldn't stand to be in the presence of agent Tomlinson.

"There is definitely going to be an investigation, but my guess is they'll be looking for the leak for the next few years without a clue where it came from." Liam shared with the both of them.

"You think there's an inside informer?" Louis looked interested.

"I don't know, maybe." Liam shrugged.

"You mean a mole?" Harry asked a bit nonsensically. "What like someone would set me up?"

"Give the man a medal, he figured something out." Louis intoned.

"Fuck you", He replied brusquely. To be honest, it was all Harry had left in him. It's been a grueling twenty four hours.

"So I see you recruit just about anyone to the secret service nowadays?" Tomlinson lifted an eyebrow and turned to Liam, like Harry wasn’t even in their company. And really, this was just adding insult to injury.

"I've managed to make it out alive, haven't I?" Harry challenged.

"Please", Louis scoffed at him. "If it weren't for me, you'd have been dead by now. So I wouldn't brag about it."

Niall and Harry exchanged clandestine looks, silently communicating how close they really got this time around and how fortunate Harry was, that Louis was on the scene when he got there.

They were interrupted by Simon's voice, who just got off a call on his blackberry. "The search unit can't track him", he leveled his gaze at them all, ending with Harry and Louis. "He's gone."

"Tell them to keep looking", Louis huffed his frustration and stalked off from the group, not before throwing a last. "And tell your rookies not to get in our way next time."

Harry felt a little like an idiot, being left standing there with the entire crew to answer to, after the catastrophe that was this whole operation, they needed to figure out what went wrong and who was to blame for all of it. But on the other hand, he couldn’t bring himself to be too bothered about it, he guessed it only made sense for someone who was this close to losing everything to the whims of a mad man; all he felt was the strongest urge to clean up, get home and call his mama to tell her he loved her. They could deal with the rest of it, later.

Little did Harry know, the worst was yet to come.

 

 

End of Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I was curious to find out if anyone cares to read more of this verse? I have a plot line in mind but I'm not sure if anyone will be interested in it. Please let me know what you think, I'm open for any other suggestions. Thanks for reading!


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